A Child's Thoughts
by FeliceWZ
Summary: When Elysia is at bed, sleepy but not sleepy enough, she starts to think about the world and its miracles and discovers something.


_Whoopie-flippin'-doo, I wrote an one-shot about Elysia though I don't even like her. Well, for being a kid, she's a pretty cool kid, but still… nwah. Anyway, this is set after or at the very end of the manga's storyline; I imagined her to be about 5 or 6 now, around the age that you usually start elementary school (at least here in Germany).  
Maybe I'll even write the nightmare she's having sometime; I ought to have the hand-written-while-at-school version still lying around somewhere._

**A child's thoughts**

For some time now, little Elysia was haunted by a nightmare. It was always the same, returning night for night. Not like the nightmares she'd have when her mother had told her an a little too scary tale, it was far worse: Her imagination of what had happened when her father had left one evening and never come back. It made her dread the evenings and her parents couldn't help her; her mother did what she could and her father... well, her father was dead.

Some days after that evening she kept dreaming about, she and her mother had gone to his funeral and they'd watched as they threw the soil on his coffin. Back then she hadn't understood it at all, she hadn't realised he'd never ever stand up and go to work again. Now she knew because her mother had told her so many times and every new day proved it, with every ringing of the doorbell. It couldn't be some stupid joke; it had gone for far too long and her parents weren't that mean.

Elysia didn't really comprehend the adults' world and their deeds, but one day it struck her how strong her mother, this fragile, tender woman, actually was. She couldn't spend much time with crying and being down like Elysia did, she had to go to work every morning now to earn their money and generally had to look for both of them all on her own.

About once a week her father's best friend Roy, a tall man with dark hair and eyes, also a soldier, showed up to talk to her mother a little while. Elysia had known him before, but he still seemed strange and frightening to her. It was a soldier's job to kill - despite her young age she knew that much, and she also knew that he already had killed. Many times. Once it had even been in the newspapers (she was only starting to read, but she'd overheard her mother and Roy discussing it). He had burned the woman who had murdered her father alive, and Elysia had no idea what to think about that. On the one hand, this woman - Maria something was her name - had killed her father and she hated her for ruining their lives and bringing such grief upon herself and the ones she loved, and of course she had to be punished. It wasn't Maria's death that affected her, although Maria had a really friendly face. It was the fact that maybe she'd had a family or friends as well, and they would be sad now. Elysia wanted no one (except for Maria) to suffer such a high amount of sorrow and despair. Killing was just horrible.

Why was it that men always had to kill, anyway? There were still wars going on, and she'd heard her father tell about a war he'd participated in when she had been very little. The thought of even such a kind and funny person like her father having killed many men horrified her once she was able to understand what had been said, so one morning, when she couldn't stand it anymore, she and her parents had had a long talk about it. Now she knew that he'd never wanted to do that, and that he'd been forced to, and the same for Roy.

Elysia's parents both had light, merry green eyes, and so did she. They showed exactly what was going on in their minds and were adding a great deal to the facial expression. However, there was something wrong with Roy's eyes. They seemed rather like deep, muddy pools to her, the light couldn't brighten them up, and they were so narrow. She felt that he was hiding a lot, from the world and maybe even from himself. Could one hide something from their very self? And why would you do that in the first place? What secrets did this man have, what was so utterly wrong about his thoughts that he himself was afraid of acknowledging them, she wondered. Maria had dark blue eyes, and even her eyes appeared to give away more.

Sometimes Roy was accompanied by a friend of his, a blonde woman. Another soldier, but her eyes were wide and radiated friendliness behind a façade of strictness and discipline that Elysia was scared of. Why wouldn't she smile when she could? Well, probably she just wasn't given any opportunities. Adults smiled way too few times, anyway.

And then there was her big sister Winry whom she had met on her third birthday; she was the one Elysia liked the most of all the visitors, and she also had the most likable eyes: Big, blue and emotional. Winry was soft and nice and played with her, but she lived far away and could hardly come along. A pity, because with all the work her mother had to do now, Elysia was somewhat lonely.

Friends of Winry had once come by to talk to her mother. The one was a big suit of armour, but with a nice, young voice; the other had long blonde hair (darker than Winry's, though) and strange golden eyes. Elysia had never seen anyone with golden eyes before, and she wondered how one could have them.

Nevertheless Winry's friends creeped her out: A walking, talking armour with glowing red lights instead of proper eyes was naturally scary, and the other one... was just someone Elysia felt like staying away from.

Still, she wanted to have eyes like him. They weren't as hideous as black eyes, and they sure were outstanding. (That her eyes were equally outstanding, Elysia didn't realise.) Her mother didn't know that, though, since when she came back from work, she always was so tired and Elysia didn't want to tire her even more by bothering her with such chit-chat. You couldn't change your eye colour, and that was it.

When she lay awake in their bed (despite Elysia's age she still shared a bed with her mother, she was too scared alone), curled up against her mother's soft body, sleepy but not sleepy enough, she often asked herself why her father'd had to die. No one she had asked had been able to give her a sufficient answer, and she had asked many people. Once even a passerby on the market. Her parents didn't believe in a god, so neither did she, but if there really was a god like many people preached, why didn't he prevent such things?

Why would he let his followers be unhappy if he was omnipotent? Was that some kind of cruel test they had to go through?

If that was it, Elysia couldn't understand why anyone should follow such a mean god. But wasn't a god was only responsible for his believers? So she and her family didn't fall under his authority.

Was it fate, then? Was there really some giant book, with all the lives and destinies of every single human being written down in detail? But who would write that book, and why couldn't that person be friendlier?

Probably superhuman entities didn't exist at all and the truth was that everything was left to the arbitrariness of every human. Like an incredibly big spiderweb, so that when you pulled one thread, all the other ones would also move, and all the threads were constantly being pulled and influencing each other, one thread per human. Every single second made a thousand different decision; even breathing demanded one. Elysia could stop breathing right now, which would make her die. That would make her mother and their friends and maybe Roy and his friend sad, which would force them to make more decisions, and those decisions would force other people to make decisions, and so on.

All people of the world were tied together by invisible strings made of their decisions, and everyone affected everyone else in every second, no matter how little.

That seemed the most realistic option to Elysia. It wouldn't have been fair anyways, the fates of all life in the hands of just one god or some stupid writer. What if that person had a bad day and decided to kill everyone?

And on top of that, no person should be superiour to another. Everyone should be given the freedom to decide for themselves, and if they wanted to listen to someone's orders, they should be allowed to do so.

Of course little children like herself still needed protection and guidance by their parents. But grown-up, mindful people shouldn't be forced to do anything, and if it was because "I only want the best for you". Then all envy and hate and wars would be gone. It would also help if you had to feel every pain inflicted by you, so people would stop hurting each other and think more about their actions, and, most important, would stop killing each other. Unfortunately that was impossible, but who knew? Centuries ago alchemy had been declared impossible, and now the military employed alchemists.

Elysia would become an excellent scientist and somehow find a way to make everyone have more empathy. She would help make the world better. She was Elysia Hughes. Maybe just one name among millions of other names, and maybe she was only a child, but after all, everyone affected everyone. She wouldn't be powerless. She would find a way to heal the world a little.

On the evening Elysia gave herself that promise, her life changed a lot, although she only noticed that the nightmares came more and more seldomly. She had found herself a new reason to be alive, and that filled her with new energy and let her overcome her father's death step by step, day by day, until after about a year she had finally made it.

Gracia couldn't quite tell what exactly had happened to her daughter, but it was fortunate nonetheless. Seeing her so lively and and welcoming every new day again brought the laughter back to Gracia as well. She only hoped that the world in all its cruelty wouldn't disappoint Elysia time after time until she would be broken, but she felt that this was rather unlikely. The girl had become stronger, braver (she was friends with Roy and Riza now, by the way) and prouder.

Elysia wouldn't be broken. She would stand up after she'd been beaten to the ground, like she had done before. Until the very end.

_I hope you liked it and leave me a review!_


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